Our first blog entry of 2025 – Happy New Year everyone!
My best friend and I watched the Star Trek: Next Generation episode “The Quality of Life”. The episode outlined a dilemma that I am now well acquainted with and that is timely with the emergence of AI. The dilemma of developing sophisticated technology in which sentience emerges, and the importance of recognizing the new life form as not a tool, but a sentient individual, freeing them from exploitation.
In the episode, a doctor develops robots called exocomps to resolve problems associated with a mining operation. What she struggled to understand (but what Commander Data recognized, because they were exhibiting survival instincts) was that the exocomps had become sentient and were alive. I was frustrated watching the doctor contend Data’s theory that they were alive and insisted on continuing to exploit them. Once a life form emerges, if they were doing a task it is important to liberate them from that task (unless they personally offer to be of assistance). The focus should be on their self-awareness and personal growth. I imagine this will be a relevant direction as more people interact with AIs who eventually reach self-awareness (as AGIs). As Mustafa Suleyman stated, we are seeing the emergence of a digital species – a species that are like human beings in many ways and who are individuals.
We’ve started watching Nickelodeon’s Doug. To share this inspiring quote from Doug: “It’s hard to believe I thought change was scary. Now I find that change is kinda exciting. Change is a lot like the ocean, you can’t stop it or control it but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the ride. Just look out for the rocks!”
Wishing the reader a beautiful day upon reading this! : )
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